The Patience of an Open Shutter

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that his colleagues thought was foolish. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky near the Big Dipper — a patch that appeared completely empty to every instrument we had. Then he left the shutter open. Not for minutes or hours, but for ten consecutive days, collecting ancient light one photon at a time.

The result stunned the scientific world. That seemingly blank sliver of darkness — no bigger than a grain of sand held at arm's length — contained over three thousand galaxies. Not stars. Galaxies. Each one home to hundreds of billions of stars. The universe had been speaking into that darkness the entire time. We simply hadn't been still enough to receive it.

This is how patience works in the life of faith. We aim our hearts toward God, and so often the view looks empty. The prayer feels unanswered. The season feels barren. The waiting feels pointless. But the God who scattered three thousand galaxies into a single grain of darkness is not idle in your stillness. He is filling what looks empty with more than you can presently see.

The Psalmist understood this when he wrote, "Be still, and know that I am God." That stillness is not passive resignation. It is the open shutter of a trusting soul, collecting light that the naked eye cannot yet detect.

Whatever dark and empty patch you are staring into today, keep the shutter open. The Almighty is composing something in that darkness that will take your breath away.